Ghosts are People Too

by Carolyn Ridder Aspenson

  She nodded, her face and watery eyes both red and puffy. She’d cried, a lot. “I’m okay.”

  I looked at Jack. “Is she—”

  “I’m going to take a shower,” Gen said. “I feel icky.”

  “Okay, yes. That’s a good idea.”

  She headed to the bathroom while Jack said hello to my other friends.

  I cornered him in at my kitchen counter. “What’s going on?”

  “We’ve asked her not to leave town for the time being.”

  “So, she’s a suspect?”

  “Do you know if she has an attorney? She might end up needing one.”

  “She didn’t kill Jeffrey. I know she didn’t.”

  “She needs to stay in town, Chantilly. I’m trusting you to make sure she does.”

  I nodded. “Yes, yes. Of course. I’ll keep her safe with me.” Even if that meant safe from him, I thought.

  Thelma sighed. “Bless her heart. I hope she doesn’t end up on one of those documentaries, but if she does, I wonder if they’ll put us on it, too?”

  Del gave her a look that would send a horse running in fear.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that,” Thelma said.

  “Jack, you can’t believe she had anything to do with this. We were just getting ready to call you. She was upset when he showed up at the historical property, yes, but not like that. She didn’t want him dead, she just wanted him to leave her alone. She was trying to figure out what to do.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do, too. Figure out what’s going on. And while I do that, just keep her in town like I said, okay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He didn’t smile, not even a little bit, and I was okay with that. I knew he had a job to do, but I didn’t much like his attitude toward me or my best friend. So much for trying to re-establish a friendship.

  He nodded to Thelma and Del. “Ladies.” As he walked toward the door, he said goodbye to Austin and then walked out. Just like that.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Del said.

  I agreed. “I hate to rush you out, but I think Gen needs some privacy.”

  Thelma shoved a heaping fork full of salad into her mouth. “I’ll eat fast,” she said.

  Del dragged Thelma’s plate across the small table. “You’ll take it to go, that’s what you’ll do.”

  I retrieved a Tupperware container from the cabinet, and Del scooped Thelma’s salad into it.

  “You take care of that girl,” she said. “If we can help, just let us know.”

  “Maybe you should hide the knives. Just in case,” Thelma said.

  “Thelma, please,” Del said.

  After they left, I cleaned up the kitchen and waited for Gen to finish getting ready for bed. She had a very specific nightly ritual of facial masks and creams, and a whole body lotion routine that took upwards of ten minutes. She’d done it for years, which was probably why her skin looked ten years younger than mine. I stared at the ever increasing age spots on my forearms and pouted. Hindsight was twenty-twenty, and I knew I’d never take the time for that careful of a skin routine anyway.

  I tapped on Austin’s shoulder. He was eyes deep in a video game, and it was his bedtime, so I sent him off to slumber kicking and screaming. When Gen finally came into the den, she looked refreshed, but not recovered.

  She curled up on the couch next to me wearing pink Victoria’s Secret pajamas. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  I’d waited for her with a pen and small journal in hand. “We need to figure out what your husband was doing and who killed him.”

  She ogled the journal. “What’re you doing, taking notes?”

  “Absolutely. You’re not the only one upset with him, he made that clear when we saw him. If we figure out who else was, that’ll bring up one step closer to the real killer.”

  She leaned back and sighed. “Where to start? I don’t even know half the people he does anymore.” She suddenly sat up. “Wait. I wonder if he’s got anything on his laptop? He must, right?”

  “Probably, but we’d need it to find out.”

  She stood. “Be right back.” She returned with a laptop.

  “Is that his?”

  She shook her head. “It’s mine, but we share an iCloud account. He set up mine to automatically store everything in the cloud last year. He said he’d been doing it forever, and it was the best thing to do for document retrieval.”

  I loved my best friend. “You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met.”

  She laughed. “Except I’m not sure how to get to the cloud. Do you know?”

  “Not at all, but I bet I know someone that does.”

  Twenty minutes later Olivia tapped on my front door. When I let her in, I hugged her. “Thank you so much for coming.”

  “It’s the least I could do. I wanted to tell you that Detective Jack asked me when Miss Gen came back to the historical society.” She frowned at Gen. “I had to tell him the truth, Miss Gen. I couldn’t lie.”

  “It’s okay. You did the right thing,” Gen said.

  I explained what we needed, and Olivia got to work. While she didn’t always come off as the sharpest nail in the box, she knew her Apple products. I’d often ask her to help me, and I considered myself fairly Apple knowledgeable. Olivia, however, was far more advanced than I was.

  She tapped away, sharing updates for what she was doing, and the items she’d sent to my printer. “The printer’s out of paper.”

  “Oh, I’m on it.” I rushed to the printer and stuffed more paper in it, grabbing the documents already printed.

  I handed them to Gen, who shuffled through them, making piles. “I’m separating them by date for now.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Excuse me, but there are over 3000 emails in here. You don’t want to print all of them, do you?”

  Gen angled the computer her direction. “Let me go through them. I might be able to find something that way.”

  While she did that, Olivia organized the printed documents and handed papers to me. I wrote down names in my journal and made notes on the papers.

  We stayed up the entire night going through those emails, and by the time we’d finished, and I’d taken so many notes my hand cramped, we finally came up with a handful of suspects.

  Olivia yawned. “Heavens, I have got to get some sleep, or a strong cup of coffee from Del’s.” She yawned again. “Is it almost time for her to open?”

  I glanced at the cable box under my TV. “Oh, gosh, yes, it is. I had no idea we’d stayed up all night.”

  “No wonder I’m give out,” Olivia said.

  “Why don’t you take the day off and try to rest?” I thanked her for being such a monumental help. “We couldn’t have found any of this without you.”

  “I think I’ll take you up on that,” she said and then frowned. “Oh, heavens. We’ve got a tour this afternoon.”

  “I can do it.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly. I’ll be there. A few hours of sleep and a shower, and I’ll be good to go.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “You’ve got a full plate as it is, what with the party and now this.”

  “We can postpone the party.”

  Gen spoke up then. “Over my dead body.” She paused when she realized what she’d just said. “That was horrible. I mean we’re having that party. Consider it my going away party.”

  “But you’re not allowed to leave town,” Olivia said.

  “I will be when we figure out which one of the people on this list killed my husband...”

  GEN SLEPT WHILE I GOT Austin up and off to school. By the time I made the turn around and got home, she was already up and ready to go.

  “Where should we start?”

  “How about Del’s for breakfast? I need a serious cup of coffee.”

  “I hope she’s got something strong.”

  “I promise you she does.”

  Del served us up two cups of hot coffee and
two morning specials—bacon, egg and cheese biscuits with a side of fruit. Gen examined the scrumptious delights, lifting up the top half of the biscuits and touching the crispy bacon with her finger. “Oh, screw it. My husband is dead, and I’m a suspect in his murder. I deserve the darn bacon.” She picked up the biscuit and took a big bite.

  I giggled as she dug in because she was right. She deserved the bacon as well as a full retraction from Jack for being a potential suspect, and I hoped to figure out just how to get that, too.

  Del topped off our coffees and flung her head toward Gen’s plate. “She could use a few more of those. Girl’s skinnier than a switch.”

  Wasn’t that the truth. “I’m just glad she’s eating,” I whispered.

  Gen, head down into my notes with a piece of biscuit in her hand, wasn’t paying attention. She hadn’t even noticed when Thelma walked in and sat at the table with us.

  “Hey y’all, any news?”

  “We’re exhausted from being up all night, and we have a list of suspects,” I said. “But it’s a mile long.”

  She swiveled her head and looked behind her. “I don’t see it.”

  Gen glanced up as Del shook her head at Thelma. “Honey, your brain’s about as lost as last year’s Easter egg.”

  I held back my giggle. “I was speaking figuratively, not literally, Thelma.”

  She chuckled. “Well, I knew that.”

  “Emm hmm,” Del said.

  “These have to be about the money.” Gen handed me a pile of three emails and pointed to my notes. “But I can’t figure out who sent them.”

  The emails were from a Gmail account, each short and to the point.

  Why are you doing this?

  Stop ignoring me.

  I’ll stop you if it’s the last thing I do.

  “If we find out who sent these, we’ll find our killer,” she said.

  “I’m not sure about that,” I said. “Because we’ve got these, too.” I handed her the emails from Harvey Barrington. “He was pretty upset.” I also held up a stack of emails from Charles Clydesdale, Jeffrey and Harvey’s previous business partner. “And don’t forget about these. He sounds like he’s fixin’ to pop a blood vessel in a few of them.”

  “Oh, heavens,” Thelma said. “My great-great uncle Oscar Chamblee did that the day after his sixty-fifth birthday. My great-great Aunt Clara, his wife, she said there was blood everywhere. Could never get it out of his Sunday suit either.”

  Gen shot me an amused look and I smiled back at her, giving my shoulders a slight shrug.

  “Okay, so we know Harvey threatened Jeffrey, but that wasn’t unusual. He’s kind of a jerk, and they’d had a lot of problems over the past few months, but I can’t imagine him killing someone, especially Jeffrey. He’s all talk and no action.” She pulled out her laptop and turned it on. “Easiest way to find out who the other email is from is to email the address and ask who it is.”

  “Don’t do that,” I used two fingers and gently closed the top of her laptop. “I’m sure there’s another way. You don’t want to show your hand.”

  “Honey, I’ll show anything I’ve got to clear my name.”

  “Oh, what have you got to show?” Thelma asked.

  Del smacked herself on the forehead.

  “If this person killed your husband, and you email him, he’s going to know you know something, and that puts you in danger. We need to give these to Jack.” I took all of the papers she’d brought. “They could help prove you’re innocent.”

  “But we need them.”

  “We’ll make copies at the office.” I handed Del my debit card to pay for our meal.

  She took my card. “I got me a little printer that makes copies in my office.”

  “It’s a lot of papers, and I don’t want to use all your ink.” I showed her the thickness of the stack. “We’ll just get it done right quick at the office, but thank you for offering.”

  Jack examined the emails from the Gmail account. “You printed out how many emails?”

  “I’m not sure. We didn’t count.”

  “But these are the only ones from that account?”

  I nodded.

  “They could be related.”

  “Could be?” Gen did her best to hold her composure. “That’s absurd. They’re absolutely related.”

  “We don’t know that, but we can find out where they’re from and go from there.”

  I scooted to the edge of the metal chair in the interrogation room. “Will you tell us?”

  “We don’t typically give out information pertaining to active investigations.”

  “We’re providing you with personal emails. How can you not tell us what you find out?”

  “Detective, my husband was murdered. I deserve to know what’s going on in the investigation.”

  I couldn’t believe Jack was being so cold, so unemotional, so rude. “Gen, could you excuse us for a moment, please?”

  She stared at me.

  “It’s okay. It’ll just be a minute or two.”

  She stood and held her chin up high when she spoke. “I’ll be outside.”

  After she closed the door, I steadied my trembling body and chose my words carefully. “Do not let what happened between us affect my best friend.”

  He raised his right brow. “What happened between us?”

  “About Bobby. Don’t bring his murder into this.”

  He leaned back in his chair and studied me, a slight smile forming on his face. “How exactly did Bobby’s murder affect us?”

  I struggled to find the right words mostly because his confident attitude and amused smirk made me uncomfortable. “Because I...because, you know, what happened. How things were resolved. If that’s getting in the way of this investigation, you should remove yourself from it.”

  He laughed. “Exactly how would a solved murder get in the way of an unsolved one that’s not at all connected?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  His smile took over his face, and he laughed. “I have no hard feelings toward you for what happened, and I promise you, I’m not letting anything get in the way of solving Jeffrey Avondale’s murder.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. He’d barely spoken to me since everything went down, and he hadn’t even tried. “Good, because you’re a professional. What happened shouldn’t matter.” I wanted to kick myself for giving him a backhanded compliment when I’d wanted to be stern and give him a lecture. My communication skills usually worked wonders on tween boys, but when it came to adult men, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.

  “And it doesn’t.”

  “Good, because you need to find out who killed Jeffrey, and I can say with one hundred percent confidence it wasn’t my friend.”

  “She has motive and opportunity.”

  “You didn’t even check her clothing for gun powder. If you really thought she had motive, you’d have at least done that.”

  “We did do that. She willing gave us the go-ahead without an attorney.”

  I blinked. “She what? Well, if that’s true, then you didn’t find anything.”

  “Won’t know that until I have the results back later today.”

  “Gen couldn’t shoot a gun. She wouldn’t know how. She’s not like us.”

  He smirked. “You’d be surprised what the people we care about can do.”

  I didn’t respond to that, though I knew who exactly he referred to.

  He tapped his pencil on his desk. “Now, while I appreciate our time together, I’ve got an investigation to handle.”

  I stood. “Fine, but don’t be surprised when I say I told you so.” I marched out of there like I owned the place, grabbed Gen’s arm, and rushed her to my car. “Why didn’t you tell me you let them have your clothes?”

  “Because it doesn’t matter. They’re not going to find anything on them.”

  “And you’ll be cleared.”

  She pulled away. “No, I won’t be. I could have paid
someone to kill him. Lord knows I’d thought about it a time or two.”

  Luckily, we weren’t inside when she said that. “Gen, hush. Someone might hear you and take you seriously.”

  “Well, they should. That man was no saint, let me tell you.”

  I was beginning to think my best friend wasn’t, either.

  WE ARRIVED BACK AT my office to a woman standing outside the front door, staring up at the old home. She drifted away before we even got out of the car. But that gave me an idea.

  I rushed in, got Gen settled in and handling party prep then made a quick call to Del. “Is Thelma still there?”

  “Can’t get rid of her no matter what I do. Even thought about putting some Ex-Lax in her coffee.”

  I gasped. “Please tell me you didn’t.”

  “’Course I didn’t. I just thought about it. Thinking about doing something like that is a heck of a lot more fun than actually doing it. ‘Sides, she’s a pain in my rear, but she’s the best pain in my rear around.”

  I knew my grumpy older friend had a soft heart buried deep inside her. “Um, I need to go back to the house where Jeffrey was found, but I can’t take Gen.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I want to talk to someone I saw there yesterday.”

  “A someone kind of someone?”

  “Yes, a someone kind of someone.”

  “All right. What can I do?”

  “Send Thelma here to babysit?”

  “You really want to do that to your best friend?”

  I laughed. “She’s volunteered here before. Tell her I need more help.”

  “What do you want her to do? I’ll make sure she’s there if I have to drag her myself.”

  I wasn’t sure what I needed, other than a body to keep tabs on Gen. I didn’t want her leaving, but I also wanted to make sure she was safe. Thelma was the best I could come up with since Olivia was home sleeping. I told Del what to say, and a few minutes later Thelma arrived.

  I showed her what needed to be done and privately asked her to keep tabs on Gen for me. “I’ll be back right quick. Okay?”

  “It’ll be fun. I love alphabetizing.” She pointed to her temple. “Keeps my mind fresh.”

  I’d asked her to put a large stack of press releases and other documents in order by date, not letter, so I explained it again.